The Pickpocket

You were raised to be polite. Mostly, it took.
And it is rude to point your camera at strangers,
to capture what you see, the story behind the image.
The stories, real and imagined and wondered over,
the capturing, some would have it, of souls,

And so mostly you are polite. But, now and again,
the need to remember is too strong,
and the camera comes out. Aims, Focuses. Sees,
Captures something more real than the landscapes
and still-life images you collect with such clarity.

You are not sure what it says about your own soul
that it is the rude photographs you treasure the most,
shot from across a room, surreptitiously,
a stranger with a camera. a passerby, a pickpocket
of moments otherwise lost.

About this poem

Mostly true. The photograph was taken in Maine.

Tom